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China’s Vast Spy Network

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with the letter “C.” 

Remember the children’s guessing game? Today it is no longer solely a way to pass time on a long road trip. There is a new reality confronting the United States as “C” — China — expands and deepens it spy operations across the country. Under the Trump Administration FBI Director Chris Wray says it opened a new spy case against China every 10 hours. Today that number remains high with the FBI opening a new case of suspected Chinese spying every 12 hours. Less than a week ago the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced “A federal jury… convicted Yanjun Xu, a Chinese national and Deputy Division Director of the Sixth Bureau of the Jiangsu Province Ministry of State Security, of conspiring to and attempting to commit economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. The defendant is the first Chinese intelligence officer to be extradited to the United States to stand trial.” He will not be the last as the US Government is ramping up efforts to constrain Chinese state-sponsored spying against American commercial interests and governmental entities.

Out of necessity the US developed a coordinated response to the Chinese threat which today includes over 50 government agencies that share information and investigative resources. According to a source inside the FBI, over 25 years ago China already had more than 5,000 suspected agents operating in the Washington, DC area alone. They were known as the xiǎo yú or “little fish,” (小) with each member of the school responsible for picking up a small bit of information that China then gathered and put together like pieces of a puzzle. Today that number may be much higher, and it certainly reaches across the entire nation.

“American culture is open and sharing, making it relatively easy for the Chinese government to acquire commercial intelligence. Often the technical guys don’t realize the danger when they share a small fact about their research… China collects from a lot of cutting-edge engineers,” according to one intelligence source.  The FY 2021 budget provides funding for a total of 978 FBI special agents across the entire Bureau making collaboration and coordination of its resources critical to pushing back against Chinese spying. 

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According to publicly available information, there were 160 incidents of spying against the United States since 2000. Of those, 24% occurred between 2000-2009 and 76% occurred between 2010-2021, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) survey. Eight-nine of these occurred after President Xi Jinping took power, CISC reports. In addition, the survey identified more than 1200 cases of intellectual property theft litigation brought by US companies against Chinese entities in either the US or Chinese legal systems. The total number probably is much higher. Bill Evanina, a former top-level official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said the  Yanjun Xu case “is going to be… used for decades as the proof that the Chinese Communist Party uses a whole of government approach to steal our technology.” 

Information released earlier this year by DOJ suggests that about 80% of all its economic espionage prosecutions would benefit the Chinese state and about 60% of all trade secret theft cases involve the coordination of theft with China.The CIA recently established the China Mission Center which, according to CIA Director William Burns, will refocus Agency efforts at countering the threat from China. That means recruiting and training people in the language and culture of China. It will take time and scarce resources. According to one former CIA agent, the ideal candidate would be a fluent Mandarin speaker, with an advanced degree in artificial intelligence. Hopefully, some of those American children who grew up innocently playing “I spy” will choose to serve their country as patriotic adults.

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government.  Each Friday, she presents key updates on China